Windowsill

UPDATE: a stop at my mint patch across the street, and the cut mint for my morning tea is now replenished.

As you can see, I have also been to the local thrift shop and found a small piece of Oaxaca pottery, the kind that looks like it was made from pencil lead, and also a blue glass bowl, probably depression glass, that looks vaguely deco.

Further research tells me Oaxaca pottery is purely decorative, and since a low temperature firing method is used to get the black color of the clay, it’s too porous to hold water. It’s so whimsical though, I love it.

Walking along the railroad tracks at twilight, I found a few of the plants that ordinarily have drab fall colors take on a striking appearance in that light. Unfortunately, they don’t quite fit any of the vases I brought home.

I love seeing bits of the outdoors inside, but that project will have to wait for later. The sun has finally come out and the garden is dry enough to work. Time to finish transplanting, before the frost they are promising for later in the week.

Related

4 Responses to “Windowsill”

Oh that’s disgusting, Nijma!
Our mint is all leggy and slightly frost-burnt and if I need some for a salad it’s embarrassingly spotted and tacky.
You are evedently blessed with green, minty fingers! I am envious.
[Also SUNNY windows? that can’t hurt. Our “pokey” medieval hovel might suggest some faint excuses – although our fingers are not green – when we bought the ruin, the neighbours said “Oh, you’re so lucky! The sun never touches the front of the house!” ]
That’s how houses are assessed here. Not by us.
!
Your mint is BEAUTIFUL! Or “Byootifool” as a quotable student once said.

AJP, it only smells good when I first pick it and when I make the tea. This one has been sitting in water several weeks, long enough to make some tiny new shoots and leaves. It’s a new variety I’m trying out. The cutting was given to me by my Moslem friend who helped me during my Ramadan fast.

Take a look at the new photos of the cuttings I just added to the window. That is what mint should look like. The mint variety is from Jordan–it’s from some mint one of the mosque ladies brought in. She pronounced it to be “na-na baladi”– good country mint. The Arabs always smell mint to determine how good a variety it is.

If you want continuous mint during the summer, you have to plan quite a bit ahead, pruning it severely when it starts to flower, and keeping enough parts pruned to continually make new shoots. I also had a problem with some blue bottle fly creature a few years back and decided to hedge my bets by planting a new mint bed a few feet uphill (in the sun, of course). The flies never found it, and as a bonus, the early frost doesn’t touch it either.